The six-hour investigation at the fort was the first for “newbie” Miranda Arthur Smith, 24, a Westfield resident, and sixth for veteran ghost hunter Nick Smith, 24, a Queens, N.Y. resident and director of Crypto Paranormal Investigations, or CPI, a Forest Hills, N.Y.-based nonprofit that “conducts scientific investigations of allegedly haunted locations.”

Smith’s extensive, eerie experiences at the site have led him to not only return multiple times as he searches to explain what might be haunting the fort but also to declare it confidently “Marblehead’s most haunted location.”

Smith, whose family now rents out a home they own on Pleasant Street, spent summers during his youth in town. One day, he investigated the site on a whim. That initial hunch has led to a spooky fixation with the site.

In his previous investigations, which have spanned six years, he has brought to two devices of the many his team uses to the location: an electromagnetic field detector and a hypersensitive parabolic microphone. Those devices have registered strong EMF readings along with “electronic voice phenomenon” recordings, sounds picked up by the microphone that are undetectable to a human’s ears.

Smith said he has twice captured a voice at the site yelling, “Help!” And another time, when Smith was alone at the fort, he said he recorded a voice asking a question, “as though a person were standing behind him.”

“There’s definitely something going on here,” Smith said as he setup equipment for the night’s investigation. “We just haven’t collected enough data to prove what that something is.”

He continued, “For me to really say something is paranormal, I’d have to have a few things happen at once, like a change in temperature, an EMF spike and capture something on audio and video -- all at the same time.”

Then there’s the holy grail: a full-body apparition, one that would materialize, walk up to an investigator and answer a question or, as in Smith’s case, ask one.

“That would be the best piece of evidence,” said Smith. “If you were to see it, and get a picture or video of it, that would most definitely mean you got a ghost.”

Fort Sewall has yet to produce such a strong piece of evidence for Smith, but the multiple incidents over the span of years continue to hold his curiosity.

Smith’s notion that the fort may be haunted is perhaps grounded in United States and local history. The fort, widely known for providing the USS Constitution with sanctuary from two British ships on April 8, 1814, has bunkers as well as underground spaces, in which prisoners had been locked up.

“As far as tragedy, like a violent death or loss of innocent life, at Fort Sewall, we don’t know, but that may not always create a haunting or leave paranormal activity in its wake,” said Smith, explaining that was one of the reasons for the Halloween eve visit.

Smith often finds himself talking about his investigations using hypothetical questions rather than making definitive declarations. One hypothesis he has about the identity of a “possible” ghost is that it “could be” pirate John Lambert, whom judge Samuel Sewall, the man for whom the fort is named, sentenced to death.

In a follow up email Monday, Nov. 4, Smith explained he and Miranda had stayed at the fort until 2 a.m., collecting six hours of video on five different cameras they had set up around the fort, along with over four hours of audio, but came away largely empty handed. Smith added that the night was not entirely unproductive, as the footage will be used in a web documentary they plan to post online soon about Smith’s paranormal investigations over the years .

“We did not capture or record any anomalies on video, audio, still photographs and motion detectors,” said Smith, adding that they did, however, get multiple EMF readings.

Smith and his team has investigated several Marblehead locations and beyond, including Old Burial Hill, “Screaming Woman Beach” at Lovis Cove and “Devils Den” in Gettysburg, Pa., where Confederate sharpshooters found shelter and shot at Union soldiers in the Battle of Little Round Top.

“There continues to be something at Fort Sewall that remains unseen yet measurable at the same time,” said Smith. “Only through further research and future investigation of the site will any answers be discovered.”